Mr. Speaker, it is bad enough the Minister of Indian Affairs gave a sole source contract to his riding president and campaign co-chair's father-in-law, but he said yesterday in the House that it was “a $50,000 contract, not $500,000”.

Why then does the government's own contract notice put its value between $250,000 and $500,000? Is the minister misleading the House? Moreover, why is it okay to reward his riding association's family with plum jobs? Are there even any family members left on the minister's riding association that missed his gravy train?

Jim PrenticeMinister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians

Mr. Speaker, Dr. Andre is qualified to serve as our northern negotiator. Dr. Andre was hired following a publicly advertised search process. Dr. Andre is capable, effective and able to do the job.

The best thing of all, if we could hold the braying, is that his contract is for $50,000. That is 95% less than the Liberals were paying to their negotiator. Put another way, it is 100% of the value at 5% of the cost.

Mr. Speaker, that is not what the government's own contract notice says. The fact is, the Conservatives made a promise to end patronage and they have blown it apart. The minister gave a massive gift to the family of his riding president and the co-chair of his last campaign.

The minister is trying to obfuscate the value of this contract and gave it to someone with no experience in land claims. It is time to bring this minister back to reality.

When is the Prime Minister going to take this disgraced apprentice into the boardroom and hire someone who does not spell accountability p-o-r-k?

Jim PrenticeMinister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians

Mr. Speaker, the contract between Mr. Andre, as the northern negotiator is for $50,000. He is qualified to serve as the northern negotiator.

That side of the House should terminate the slander that it is spreading in the House. Maybe it is not a surprise because we are pretty close to the philosophical intellectual underpinnings of the Liberal Party: big contracts for Liberals.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development claims to care about poverty facing aboriginal Canadians. However, his actions show he cares more about creating jobs for Conservative friends and cronies. It is not just the patronage contract he gave to Harvie Andre. He also hired a failed Conservative candidate to campaign in northern Saskatchewan.

The minister is paying Jeremy Harrison to campaign in northern Saskatchewan and send out news releases on Conservative Party letterhead while listed as a government employee. Why are Canadians being billed for the re-election campaign of this defeated candidate?

Jim PrenticeMinister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians

Mr. Speaker, yet more malignant slander from the party opposite. Mr. Harrison is a respected former parliamentarian. He is someone who is working on assigned tasks for me and that is the bottom line on it.

Mr. Speaker, Saskatchewan has not seen abuse like this since the days of the Grant Devine government in Saskatchewan.

Mr. Harrison has stated he plans to run again in the next election. and the minister is using taxpayers' money to finance his pre-election campaign. This is disgraceful. A defeated MP is being paid by Indian Affairs to spend his days driving around northern Saskatchewan polling chiefs and Métis leaders on what they think his electoral chances are, and this after Mr. Harrison called aboriginal communities “banana republics”.

When will the minister stop abusing the public purse for his friend and cronies, show more accountability, and fire this defeated candidate?

Mr. Speaker, I say to my colleague opposite, it does take gall. This, a day after the Public Service Commission, an independent arm's length body reporting to Parliament, identified the political assistants who were hired by Liberal ministers who invented phantom jobs.

I can tell the member opposite, we will be asking some very significant questions of the member for Vancouver South and the member for Kings—Hants, who engaged in what is nothing more than fraudulent political activity at the cost of the public service.

Mr. Speaker, for purely ideological reasons, the government has decided to eliminate the part of the firearms registry concerning long guns. But over five million such arms have already been registered.

If his bill is passed, can the Minister of Public Safety tell us what he plans to do with these registrations. Is he going to delete them from the registry so that they will no longer be accessible to the police or is he going to keep them?

Mr. Speaker, we want a more effective system. We want a registration system that works. The Auditor General told us that the old system was not working. We want to have a system that works. We want to protect our communities and our citizens.

Mr. Speaker, I think you will see that this response was not an answer to the question I asked. I understand that the minister is thinking about the question. I hope that he will think about it enough to realize that it would be a real waste to get rid of the registrations already completed.

If he keeps the registrations, is the minister aware that there will be two categories of citizens: those who complied with the law and are registered, and those who defied the law and are not registered?

Personally I think that those who defy the law are as a rule more dangerous than those who comply with it.

Mr. Speaker, last night Conservative government members acknowledged that there is a genocide occurring in Darfur. The government would only promise action if given permission by the same murderous regime in Khartoum that is engaging in this genocide.

Even the Prime Minister said at the Francophonie summit that we must act to save a desperate population.

Will the Prime Minister act to support UN Security Council resolution 1706, take a leadership role, and get those forces on the ground now to stop Darfur's agony?

Peter MacKayMinister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency

Mr. Speaker, there was a very fulsome debate last night here in the chamber. We discussed in great detail the need for Canada and other countries to do more with the United Nations to see that the transition between the African Union and the United Nations mission takes place.

We need to continue to work diplomatically to see that this happens, not embark on some kind of a unilateral invasion, which is what the member opposite advocated.